Editor's Message

Seasons Greetings!

I'm running way behind like usual, so I'll cut to the chase. Please bear with me, I only do this once a year.

AACP humbly asks for your assistance.

A recent discussion I had with someone, reminded me that many of you might not know the mission of AACP. You may only think of us as that bookstore with all the Asian Pacific American children, culture, and history books. As I find myself often saying, "AACP is more than a bookstore." This will most likely not be the last time I use those words, because I've heard that repetition is the key to getting a message across.

AACP is More than a Bookstore :)
So in case you haven't heard or read our mission statement before, here it is again.
AACP is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the general public about Asian Pacific American culture, history, and current experiences to combat prejudice and hate, to right and prevent civil injustices (resulting from prejudice and hate), to promote self-awareness, and to foster compassion, understanding, and tolerance.

AACP's goal is to do more than educate Asian Pacific Islander Americans about their own culture, heritage, and history, we hope to reach all Americans, because prejudice and hate comes from ignorance, and tolerance and compassion comes from better understanding.

This month's articles reminded me of the importance of what we do and what we hope to do with this newsletter. Philip Chin (our other editor) upon hearing the mission statement again said, "Maybe the statement's a little too ambitious." Thankfully we have the Internet - you can reach so many more people than you would just by going to conferences and shows, and meeting them at our store.

Conferences and shows, and our publishing functions continue to be important vital duties of our organization. We love providing these great services directly to you. However, since the fall of 2001, we've had over a million actual visitors to our website and newsletters. Nearly 500,000 came just this year.

I'm not sure how much longer we can continue this newsletter. Our strategy has been like a field of dreams, "Build it and they will come." Your financial assistance will be an investment that lets us know that you believe we're on the right track. If you know of other organization that would like to underwrite the newsletter we'd like to hear from them too.

So please help us continue serving you, the community, and everyone that has Internet access that comes to visit our site.

Up Coming Events

(Editor's Message Continued)
Hey, all of you out there, don't forget to write your New Year's poems and join us for our Third Annual New Year's Poetry event. We have poet and performer Genny Lim coming, along with other AACP friends. If you can't make it, just send me your poem and I will try to get it in the newsletter or read it at the event for you.

Thank you Alan Underwood and others from the Berkeley Office of Planning & Analysis for your assistance. I hope to do another article in the future about how Berkeley and other schools are trying to handle race neutral admission policies. There's so much juicy information on this topic.

Thank you, to Philip, Sophie, and everyone else that has helped with the newsletter this past year.

Have a great Holiday Season!

Leonard Chan
Executive Editor

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After reading 11 legal briefs, listened to and read the Dec. 4th oral arguments before the Supreme Court (multiple times), and read the 9th Circuit Court's opinion on Parents v. Seattle School District, I'm not sure what I can add to this debate. I don't envy the Supreme Court Justices that will write opinions on these cases. The article that we supplied in this newsletter does not do justice to all the nuances and complexity of the Parents and Meredith cases.

For those of you that have not paid much attention to this story and do not believe the cases have much relevance to you, please do pay attention. I believe that these cases relate directly to the core mission of AACP and if you are a regular reader of this newsletter, I believe you will find these cases to be as important as I have found them to be.

Here are some of my thoughts on these two cases.

Is race consciousness racism?
After the oral arguments, Theodore M. Shaw, legal counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, summed up the two court cases the following way. Audio at CSPAN - Supreme Court School Integration Cases Reaction
"The broader issue, is whether or not it is going to be legal or constitutional in this country to voluntarily and consciously do anything about racial inequality. And for our adversaries, for some of them it's very clear, there's no stopping point on that. They believe that outside of a court order it should be illegal to do anything that is conscious about race because they equate race consciousness with racism. And that's the only way you can get to the point where you say efforts to integrate public education are some how discriminatory and segregated. It is a bold face lie at worst. At best it's steeped in ignorance and is a fundamental betrayal of what Brown was about, what the Legal Defense Fund has been about, what this country says it's about. And it is also a betrayal of Martin Luther King's dream, whom they attempt to hijack in support of their colorblind America. Which isn't really about colorblindness. It's about blindness to the reality of continued racial inequality."

I believe Theodore Shaw described the central issue very well. The broad issue of these cases do really revolve around the question "Is race consciousness racism?"

Wait, before half of you tune out and stop reading because you think you won't agree with what I have to say, I think I can really see and understand both sides of this argument.

I'm not a parent, so some of you parents out there may say that I don't know what it's like and may believe that people on the liberal side of the argument shouldn't be doing social experiments with your kids. You have every right to want the best for your children and to be able to have some control over the schools and education that your children get.

Anybody who has studied the two school districts' assignment plans, whether you're for the use of racial conscious methods or not, will see some flaws in these systems. But if the Supreme Court Justices rule against the school districts in a sweeping manner, they might reverse all the beneficial gains that have been made over the last five decades since the Brown v. the Board of Education decision.

The Brown decision eliminated government sanctioned racial segregation in schools. What is at odds now is government's desire for diversity versus the human nature tendency towards segregation. The libertarian side in all of us (some more strongly) may believe that we should let free choice sort it all out - that as long as government does not discriminate, things will work out fine. State passed propositions, like California's Prop. 209, shows that many of you believe in this "fair minded approach," that government should not use race in any discriminatory manner.

But this takes us back to Theodore Shaw's point that race consciousness is not equated to racism. The definition of racism usually contains some negative aspect of the use of discrimination for the purposes of disempowering and empowering different racial groups. If the school districts truly believe that racial diversity in it's schools would be good for all of its students, then the denial of a parent's choice of schools for the sake of racial diversity could really be seen as benefiting both the denied student and every student.

At several points during the oral arguments, Justice Scalia and others were basically indicating that "the ends do not justify the means." In these cases the wrongness of the means is more a matter of perception. The parents that sued obviously did not like the racial means, but for the majority of other parents, that were not a party to these suits, the means were not perceived as being overly unfair.

The parents that sued, perceived discrimination in the means because they did not value racial diversity as highly as other factors, like academics, that went into their decisions. I would venture to guess, that the racial diversity of the school was most likely the least of the factors that they considered to be important. In fact, the American Psychological Association's brief describes how even the most liberal minded of individuals may still avoid interaction with people that are different from themselves and thus may consciously or subconsciously choose to isolate their children based on their own aversions.

Is racial diversity really a compelling state interest?
Crystal Meredith's Petitioner's Reply Brief cite several studies, described in other briefs, that support their contention that the Jefferson County Board of Education's desire for racial diversity did not rise to the level of "compelling state interest" because the social science research in this area was inclusive.

Upon reading the brief by Armor, Thernstrom, and Thernstrom, which was in support of Meredith, you could reasonably come to the same conclusion that the social science research on the impact of racially diverse schools was inconclusive.

But when I read several briefs that cited all the peer reviewed research that showed the benefits that came from racially diversity, I could not help thinking of the parallel with the research on global warming. Like the debate on global warming, which basically has a handful of researchers in disagreement with the vast majority, so too does it seem that only a handful of researchers are in disagreement with the majority of scientists in this field of study.

Three of the interesting scientist backed briefs in support of the school districts' claim of racial diversities' importance, were the ones submitted by the American Educational Research Association (with more than 24,000 members), a group called 553 Social Scientist, and the American Psychological Association (with more than 145,000 members). All three of these briefs and even the brief by Armor are worth reading. I will try to summarize the conclusions of the three scientific briefs in support of the school districts.

Racial integration in schools
1.	Promotes cross-racial understanding, and reduces racial stereotypes and prejudice - extensive psychological research shows that, under certain conditions, interaction among persons of different races can diminish racial stereotypes and promote crossracial understanding, empathy, and mutual respect. It is particularly more important for children to get this interaction because their racial views are still open and unformed. Children that have regular interaction with persons of other races are less likely to fall into patterns of stereotypical thinking about other racial groups and are more likely to learn to regard others as individuals.
2.	Improves learning - students of different races and ethnic backgrounds often bring different cultural knowledge and social perspectives into school. Racially diverse classrooms enhance critical thinking by exposing students to new information and understandings.
3.	Improves academic achievement - although study results in this area are a little less conclusive, minorities that go to integrated schools do show higher academic achievement than those that remain at racially isolated schools. Racially isolated minority schools tend to have higher teacher turnover and thus fewer experienced high quality teachers. Minority schools also tend to have fewer resources. Thus teacher and resource disparities lead to disparities in academic achievement. Minorities that go to integrated schools also tend to earn higher degrees and major in more varied fields.
4.	Improves life opportunities - diverse schools can lead to wider and more diverse, post school, social and professional networks. It's not just what you know, it's also who you know. These networks can lead to more college and work opportunities.
5.	Can lead to positive effects on communities and society - better cross-racial understanding carried over to adulthood leads to more racial harmony in and out of the workplace. It has even lead to reductions in residential segregation and increases in civic engagement. Better understanding and less prejudice aids social cohesion. Communities and societies that lose cohesion often degenerate into ugly conflicts. You only need to read or watch the news to see lots of examples of why social cohesion is so vitally important.

What has been the effect of race-neutral policies in California Schools since proposition 209?
In San Francisco, the school board has been working, with little success so far, at trying to find new ways to create diversity within it schools. Since the passage of 209 in the fall of 1996 until 1999, San Francisco was allowed to continue using racial measure in it school assignment plan because they were under federal court orders that allowed them to use racial measures to desegregate their schools. A lawsuit that was settled in 1999 forced the school district to end the use of race in its school assignments. According to a report by UCLA Prof. Stuart Biegel, who was appointed to monitor the district's desegregation efforts, each year since 1999, there has been an increase in the number of severely resegregated schools. Severely resegregated is defined in this context as a school having any grade level within the school with 60% or more of one racial group. Here are some figures. Note that San Francisco has had approximately 113-119 schools during this period and that more recent figures, for the number of severely segregated schools, are not exact because parents can decline to state their ethnicity.

Source: final supplemental report	2001-2002	2002-2003	2003-2004	2004-2005	2005-2006
# Severely Resegregated Schools	30	34	41-43	43-45	49-52

In a Nov. 3rd National Review editorial by Rich Lowry he states "Prop. 209 has been a success." He goes on to describe how minorities at the University of California system have done well. Another editorial at discriminations.us also speak glowingly of how prop. 209 did not harm enrollment at the UC system. Both cite how enrollment of underrepresented minorities (American Indian, African American, Chicano and Latino) has either stayed the same or gone up and of how schools like UC Berkeley's underrepresented are actually graduating at a higher percentage rate than before 209.

The reality is that California is now graduating a higher number of minorities from its high schools than before 209 passed in 1996. A San Francisco Chronicle article states that underrepresented students made up 39% of the California high school graduates and 18% of the freshmen at UC in 1997, and 46% of the CA high school graduates and 19% UC freshmen in 2005. UC enrollment has not been keeping pace with the increasing demographics of the underrepresented.

The UC Berkeley underrepresented increase in graduation rate was equally deceiving. Numbers supplied by the Berkeley Office of Planning & Analysis show that although the percentage had increased, the actual numbers graduating were significantly lower. In 2003, 572 underrepresented Berkeley students graduate and in 2004 it had 312. 2005 was only slightly better at 361. The 10-year average between 1994 and 2003 was 592. So the figure for 2004 compares quite poorly relative to the previous 10 years.

In a March 2005 interview UC Berkeley's chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau states, "I think people voted for 209 idealistically and generally thought it would produce a fairer system. My conclusion, and the conclusion of many people around me, is that because it has resulted in a dramatic diminution in numbers of particular classes of California citizens, it has in fact created a system that is quite unfair."

What can we do if the Supreme Court decides to eliminate the use of race conscious policies for school assignments?
This is the question that California schools have been trying to answer for the last 10 years since prop. 209's passage. Two other states, Washington and Michigan, have since passed similar referendums to 209. Whether or not the Supreme Court decides to eliminate race conscious school assignment policies, it appears that voters are starting to end the policies on their own.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, San Francisco parents are starting to take an active role in marketing and recruiting for the schools that their kids go to. Perhaps a partial solution is in the marketing of schools.

If parents were fully briefed on the importance of integrated schools, perhaps they would factor in a school's diversity into their school choices. Perhaps a way should be found to test cultural awareness, prejudice and stereotypical views, and empathy, and should then be included with a school's math, reading, and writing scores. If parents did not know the benefits of math and chose to send their kids to schools that did not teach math, this would be a disaster of great magnitude.

One need only look at almost every conflict taking place in the world today and see the costs of segregation and balkanization. The benefits that come from racial integration and learning to live with each other are that important. Maybe peace on earth really does begin with the simple act of children sitting down with others that are different and learning from each other.

The following books are discounted for subscribers to our newsletter. The discounts on these books end January 8, 2007.

Hmong and American
Stories of Transition to a Strange Land

Author Sue Murphy Mote chronicles the lives of 12 Hmong American immigrants, recording their pains with life in America and their struggles in trying to hold on to their Hmong culture. Hmong and American is an enlightening narrative.

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ORDER -- Item #3435, Price $32.00

Piecing Earth & Sky Together

Mei Yoon's grandmother tells her a traditional Mein folktale about the creation of the earth and sky. This facinating folktale incorporates the Mein culture of distinctive embroidery by having the main characters, a brother and sister, sew together all the elements of the earth and sky.

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ORDER -- Item #3069, Price $17.95

Bamboo Among the Oaks
Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans

Bamboo Among the Oaks is a first of its kind anthology written completely by Hmong Americans. The book contains a wide variety of writings, including short stories, essays, plays, and poems dealing with an equally wide range of subjects.

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ORDER -- Item #3434, Price $13.95

Dia's Story Cloth
The Hmong People's Journey of freedom

Dia's Story Cloth is an informative and fascinating picture book that uses photos of author Dia Cha's family history depicted by needlework illustrations on cloth. Although this is the author's own story, it is really a story shared by many Hmong Americans - from their ancient past migration from China to South East Asia, to their hardships face at the end of the Vietnam War, and on to their eventual move to America.

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ORDER -- Item #2592, Price $15.95

Folk Stories of the Hmong
Peoples of Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam

Folk Stories of the Hmong is the first major American collection of Hmong folktales. This folktale anthology includes an informative Hmong culture and history section. Folk Stories of the Hmong was author Dia Cha's first major work and still stands as a landmark among Hmong American writings.

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ORDER -- Item #1920, Price $35.00